Bar of the week: Out Of The Blue at The Berkeley

Every week, we scour the city to find the best bars our capital has to offer. Whether you're a cocktail kind of guy, or a man who enjoys a decent draft beer, there's a GQ-worthy drinking spot to suit every taste.

Valentine's Day ideas that are guaranteed to impress her

From gorgeous gifts to romantic getaways and the best places to take your beau out to celebrate, we've compiled the ultimate list of Valentine's Day ideas for her - as chosen by the women of GQ - to treat your better half with this 14 February

Bar of the week: Out Of The Blue at The Berkeley

Every week, we scour the city to find the best bars our capital has to offer. Whether you're a cocktail kind of guy, or a man who enjoys a decent draft beer, there's a GQ-worthy drinking spot to suit every taste.

Valentine's Day ideas that are guaranteed to impress her

From gorgeous gifts to romantic getaways and the best places to take your beau out to celebrate, we've compiled the ultimate list of Valentine's Day ideas for her - as chosen by the women of GQ - to treat your better half with this 14 February

Benjamin Disraeli noted that "there are lies, damned lies and statistics". The 19th-century iteration of fake news, perhaps. Still, some things are undeniable and the rise of the SUV is one. In 2016, UK buyers bought 437,931 of them, a market sector eclipsed commercially only by the supermini and the family hatchback. This isn't a trend; it's a love affair. And quite an illicit one when you think about it. How many of us ever venture off-road in our off-roaders?

Land Rover has been a major beneficiary. In 1996, the company sold 125,222, mostly earthy, vehicles worldwide; last year, it shifted 434,583 rather more luxurious cars. The Velar, which arrives to plug the space between the Range Rover Evoque and the Sport, should help nudge that figure over 500,000: an extraordinary achievement.

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Psychologists would probably tell us that a burly SUV enhances our sense of security in what feels increasingly like the end of days. But when it comes to Land Rover, a more positive prognosis is possible: these are extremely cool cars. Bizarrely, for a company whose product USP is breadth of capability up to and including wading through a river, LR's design boss, Gerry McGovern, is unwavering in the belief that his area of responsibility is now the key factor in the company's success.

Of course, he would say that, but with the Velar it's hard to argue. It's so pretty you could park it in The Design Museum and bask in the subtle nuances of its surfaces. This is precisely what Land Rover did on the night of the car's reveal in front of an audience of starry and starry-eyed influencers. The next week, 12,000 people had registered an interest in buying one. A new Range Rover, it seems, is now something that generates its own celebrity energy field. Especially if it's riding on whopping 22-inch wheels.

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That also ratchets up expectation. Jaguar and Land Rover are part of the same group and the technological cross-pollination is what makes a car like this possible. JLR has invested heavily in aluminium and the Velar repurposes the chassis that underpins Jaguar's excellent F-Pace SUV. The engines are familiar, too: two diesels, two petrols, with power outputs from 177bhp to 375bhp. The challenge is to wring a unique character from the common components and broadly speaking the Range Rover template is skewed towards greater comfort and that formidable off-road prowess.

Before that, you have to get past McGovern's ghost. If anything, the Velar's cabin is even better executed than its sublime exterior. Back in the day, you knew you'd made it when the dashboard of your car was festooned with buttons. Now, less is definitely more. The Velar's various displays remain "secret until lit", hidden behind three panels of toughened glass in a horizontal beam that introduces a Zen-like calm to the cabin. It all comes alive with a theatrical, techy flourish and the main multimedia touch screen is ergonomically intuitive and graphically harmonious. Air-con and audio levels are still controlled by floating rotary knobs, AKA digital - in the original sense of the word - interaction, so you can keep your eyes on the road. Plump for the optional sustainable Kvadrat interior trim and you might get arrested for caressing your car.

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Issues? The steering wheel buttons are subtly highlighted and look lovely, but I couldn't work out which one did what. The audio part of the touch screen display also glitched repeatedly. Owners could fix wonky bits of their old Series 1 Land Rovers with a mallet. Only a certifiable lunatic would try that here.

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You could argue that only a similar degree of mental infirmity would lead you off-road. But we managed it and for a car that's so magnificently composed on the road, its ability on a steep climb, or traversing a perilous 45-degree incline, is genuinely gob-smacking. The Velar uses Land Rover's brilliant Terrain Response system, which basically makes you surrender all the difficult, scientific stuff to a rotary controller that harnesses an armoury of chassis electronics. Trust and believe is easier said than done, especially when the windscreen is full of sky, but it works. Depending on which spec you've gone for, the Velar rides on coil springs or air suspension and its axle articulation and contortions are impressive whatever the setup.

Not least because, in the right colour and trim combination, this is a car that carves a path through Mayfair with the head-turning otherworldliness of a motor show concept or highly strung piece of Italian exotica. The supercharged V6 is largely silent and swift, the overall aim being to hermetically seal you off from the real world.

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How things have changed since Peter York first wrote about Sloane Rangers and the original Range Rover purloined the title of Condé Nast's fashion flagship Vogue to elevate the car far and away from its utilitarian roots. In 2017, Range Rover is regarded by many as the world's leading luxury car. With the Velar, it's nonpareil in the design context, too.

This Range Rover Sport film will blow your mind

Watch the new electric Range Rover Sport take on 99 hairpins, then ascend 999 steps at an angle of 45-degrees to 'Heaven's Gate' in China. We asked the racing driver behind the wheel to tell us how he did it...